I know it isn’t pleasant, but for a moment let’s take a trip down memory lane. Back to the dark days of the BOCC when the education budget wasn’t funded above the Maintenance of Effort (MOE) required by law. People came out in droves to testify before the BOCC, to no avail. This frustration helped usher Jan Gardner into office in 2014. To her word, County Executive Gardner has increased funding for our county schools. This year she allocated $10.5 million over the MOE funding from the previous year. County Superintendent Alban wanted $13.8 million for salaries in order to revamp the pay scale. The BOE slowly shook it’s collective head from side to side and reallocated $7.4 million from the salary pool. We think the title of FNP’s coverage of last night’s meeting kinda says it all:

We know budgeting is hard, and there will be winners and losers. However, the teachers are sick and tired of being the losers. Every single year. And we are sick and tired for them. Friend of the Yokel Casey Day-Kells was quoted in the paper as saying this:

“Not only one, is the scale broken, but at this time, so are many of your employees,” Day-Kells said.

You business people out there know that demoralized employees are not good for your bottom line. And while we know our county teachers are professionals who put on their best face every day, we can’t help but think this will affect how they perform their jobs.We want to help come up with some solutions, unlike some of our county politicians:

Sorry to have to keep using this one folks. But it’s kinda not our fault.

We are going to try to follow this logic. So since the BoE cut the money from salaries , Tony should have been allowed the amendment to do away with over $6 million from the total budget because that would have made this all better…how? So confused. Are we to forget the past, Mr. Delauter? Are you now painting yourself as a “friend of education” who has no problem raising teacher salaries???!!! PLEEAZZZEE!!! What about all those years you voted to keep the budget at MOE and therefore directly contributed to this problem? And how about that other time when you cut that Head Start program because all the women should be at home with their kids baking your pie? Our memory is long and detailed, councilman. As for the teachers voting on their salaries, we’ll let the above gif take care of that. We can’t keep addressing that issue over and over again. We just can’t. But, it sure seems like a hollow complaint, when the “get rich quick plan” to become Frederick County’s brand new council member teacher millionaire hybrid class is nakedly hogwash. Obvious to literally everyone with two brain cells to rub together is that they are not able to control that money pot.

Now onto our Yokel brainstorm. Since we cannot guarantee that money allocated to the school system will be used to increase salaries how about a special little tax increase that is specifically and only for this purpose? Now before you get all:

on us, just hear us out. Things cost money people. And yes, the government should do the absolute best job it can spending it wisely. (That doesn’t mean cutting just for the sake of cutting, Kirby!) However, sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to and in order to get what we want we have to pony up! So let’s say that we have a special fee just for this purpose. Whatever goes into this fund can and will only be used for salaries. The CE, Council, and BoE cannot use it for anything else ever. Kinda like the Chesapeake restoration fee on your water bill. And it wouldn’t have to be much. If every county resident (census prediction is 245,322 for June 2015) paid $41 a year we would have an extra 10,058,202. If you spread that out in monthly payments it comes to $3.42 a month. If you are ready and able to add more, feel free. And if we ever have a year that our teachers are paid a competitive salary, we can take a break from it. What say you, Yokels? If you have any other ideas, please put them in our comment section. Let’s start a dialogue on how to fix this so we don’t have to have this same cycle of disappointment year after year after year.

One thought on “Your Yokels’ thoughts and ideas about teacher salaries”

Thank you for this post and your blog. You capture how too many of us feel. Also I love your snark. I would have no problem paying more taxes for teaches to be paid a decent wage, when we moved here 16 years ago I was so impressed with the education my two youngest received. I saw what my taxes were paying for, I don’t understand why that is so hard for people to see. I watched in horror the havoc the last BoCC created for the schools, trying to ensure their failure, if the schools fail then that opens the door to justify privatization of the schools. Was that what the BoCC was trying to do, did they have an ulterior motive? I think they did, I still feel that is what certain people are trying to do.

Is that still the ulterior motive, I think it is with Cindy Rose and her ilk. You privatize the schools take the federal government out of it then no more testing, among things. she is all about local control, which would mean privatization, perhaps she isn’t so ignorant after all?

Kirby is trying to push for school construction to be done by a private company…